The 'Deadpool' star teamed up with Lead From Behind to raise awareness about the preventative procedure.
Ryan Reynolds is getting real about his health -- and adding a little competition to the mix. The Deadpool star and his friend, Rob McElhenney, both turned 45 this year, and decided that in order to promote healthy colon health and getting a procedure that can “literally save your life” they would get colonoscopies. And allow the world to see.
The duo teamed up with Lead From Behind, and organization that raises awareness about colon cancer, which is preventable, but the second deadliest cancer in America.
Always in front of the camera, Ryan and Rob decided to document the procedure, which takes less than an hour and allows a doctor to take a look at the colon and check for cancer-causing polyps, to take away the stigma that comes with getting it done.
“I would never normally have any medical procedure put on camera, and then share it,” Ryan told the camera as it followed him into the doctor's office.
“It’s not every day that you can raise awareness about something that will most definitely save lives. That's enough motivation for me to let you in on a camera being shoved up my a**,” he added.
Prior to being taken into the room for the 30-minute procedure, the doctor talks to the Free Guy star about the steps. Ryan is wheeled into the operating room, and the next scene shows him waking up in recovery, following brief anesthesia.
While he sits in recovery, and eats a graham cracker, the doctor informs him that since he did a great job prepping -- and cleaning out his system -- he was able to locate one small polyp on the right side of his colon and cut it off, which was “potentially live-saving.”
Rob’s turn came next.
“I figure I can’t go wrong in terms of comparing myself to Ryan,” the actor said. “They either find nothing, and that means my colon was cleaner than his, or they find a polyp, and it’s either bigger than his, which is awesome, or its smaller than his, which means I had less of an opportunity to have cancer. Either way, I win.”
After undergoing the screening, Rob’s doctor reveals that he found three small polyps that he was able to remove and were “not a big deal.”
After both men had the procedure, the camera cuts back to the duo -- in a house -- where Ryan admits that the procedure “didn’t seem so bad.”
In a press release from the Lead From Behind organization, Ryan shared the importance of getting screenings and his reason behind the initiative.
“I’ve been on camera a lot. But this was the first time one was shoved up my a**,” Ryan said. “The procedure and prep were painless but the discomfort of filming and sharing the process was the hardest part. Rob and I did it because we want this potentially life-saving procedure to be less mysterious and stigmatized.”
“Ryan and I both turned 45 this year and this is just a rite of passage,” added Rob, “and a great one because it can literally save your life. It’s obviously a procedure that makes people uncomfortable but it sure beats getting cancer. We wanted to have fun with this because as with all the weird things that happen in life, why not make it fun instead of scary?”
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